Sarah Silverman is looking back on her past performances with regret. In an interview with Rolling Stone published Sunday, Silverman admitted performing in blackface on series “The Sarah Silverman Program” in 2007 was “f–king ignorant.”
Despite that admission, Silverman also offset some of the blame for the decision to “the world around me.”
“I felt like the temperature of the world around me at the time was ‘We are all liberal so we can say the n-word,” Silverman said of the George W. Bush era (the episode in question, “Face Wars,” aired on October 17, 2007).
“‘We aren’t racist, so we can say this derogatory stuff.’ I was playing a character that was arrogant and ignorant, so I thought it was OK. Looking back, my intentions were always good, but they were f–king ignorant.”
Silverman previously addressed the episode in an episode of her 2018 Hulu series “I Love You, America,” She also apologized for jokes she made about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
“I don’t think of myself as being PC out of fear,” Silverman told the outlet. “Some people got mad at me for apologizing. I only did that because I was sorry. That’s a really great rule of thumb: Only apologize when you’re sorry. Always apologize when you’re sorry.”
Silverman also turned the microscope on to her friend, fellow comedian Dave Chappelle. She recalled watching the results of the 2024 election with him, and addressed his 2022 “SNL” monologue about Kanye West and Kyrie Irving.
“This is where, you know, I draw a line,” Chappelle said in a clip Silverman played. “I know the Jewish people have been through terrible things all over the world, but, but, but, but you can’t blame them on Black Americans. You just can’t.”
“He kind of, like, Jimmy Stewart stutters at the end, to give it a little folksy truth-telling charm,” Silverman told Rolling Stone. “But f–k, the idea [that] calling out massively influential zillionaire superstars for posting lies and promoting hatred of Jews is ‘the Jews blaming their troubles on Black Americans’ is f–king insane. I can’t believe I have to say this.”
“Men have been raised to not be able to feel, not be able to express themselves,” she added. “The only acceptable emotion for some reason is anger. So what happens? They feel shame and that immediately, like sugar getting converted to carbs, that gets converted into rage and outward blame. And that’s how they survive. When I see that anger directed at the trans community, at the nonspecific, nonbinary, it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with themselves. It’s ego and the terror of ‘If that’s who they are, then who am I? Where do I fall?’”
Read the interview with Sarah Silverman at Rolling Stone.
